"Health for all" has been a slogan and a guiding principle for many who work in public health and global health.

A generation and more has passed since the Alma Ata declaration in 1978, and despite a host of policies and commitments – and well argued academic analysis that says equality is possible – huge inequalities in health remain at local, national and global levels.

Public health policy has been outlined and political rhetoric marshalled, yet we in public health still tend to do things in the same old way, often based on outdated models of health. But that is changing and there is some scope for optimism. There are social movements that are growing both globally and nationally that offer a different way of doing things.

A group of people came together in Nottingham recently to change the current economic, social and political models that negatively impact health.

The first UK People's Health Assembly, hosted by Nottingham Trent University, brought together civil society organisations and activists, health professionals, academics and students to debate the forces of neo-liberalism and increasing conservative ideologies of market forces in health.

These assemblies are part of a movement that coalesces under the banner of the People's Health Movement (PHM), a coalition of civil society, communities, networks, academics and professionals.

This movement is growing to counteract and offer a different way of both understanding health and mobilising people to take control over their health and to campaign against poverty, the dismantling of welfare services and the increasing privatisation of welfare systems, including the NHS.

To use a much maligned term, this is a truly bottom-up approach, and the PHM has enabled a more strategic level of organisation to emerge to begin to try to achieve health for all.

Four main points came out of the Nottingham event. First, the need to communicate differently. People and groups are connecting together not just at local level but also, as the success of the PHM has demonstrated, in the southern hemisphere. It is now a voice that has increasing authority on the world stage of global health.

Second, we need to work differently in health to recognise the need to develop strong and broad-based rather than single issue campaigns, through community organising and engagement and developing a strategic manifesto of action. Citizen's UK led a workshop on the craft of community organising and there was also a workshop on advocacy and lobbying in public health, led by the Global Public Health Unit at University of Edinburgh.

We need to more effectively challenge corporate interests on public policy and our health and place of regulation. For example, the Global Health Watch reports that the PHM have published over the last 10 years provide an alternative world health report that has documented and analysed the social, political and economic forces that affect health.

Finally, we need discussions that are centred on building people-centred health systems, especially amid the concerns expressed about changes happening in the NHS. Stephen Watkins, a director of public health at NHS Stockport, discussed the legislative steps that may need to be taken to return our health system to its founding principles.

The whole event provided a space for expressing solidarity, learning from each other and building joint strategies to build a social movement for health that starts with people. The time has come to articulate cross cutting issues of health, social justice and the state of democracy. It challenges many of us in public health to come out of our professional ivory towers and join new movements that demand health as a human right for all and to work with people, communities and activists.